Jake's ViewHong Kong does best what China can't
The big yuan internationalisation drive would be bad news for this city if it came off - but don't worry, it won't be happening soon anyway
As the leading offshore centre, we should take the initiative and work … to make the pie that is the offshore renminbi business bigger. What is good for the renminbi is good for Hong Kong.
Pardon me for thrashing away at this one as often as I have done recently but the renminbi cheerleading chorus - "Go, Yuan, Go" - has become so loud that you would think there is nothing but cheerleaders on the field (which, in the game of yuan boosting, may just be the case).
First, however, that bit about what's good for the renminbi is good for Hong Kong. Sadly, the opposite is true. Our economy was built, and continues to prosper, by doing what the mainland cannot or will not do, right from the British theft of this place by armed robbery for the purpose of drug trafficking.
For instance, the big garment export boom that was the basis of our wealth in the 1970s and 1980s would never have come to be if that boom could have materialised in the mainland at the same time. When it did materialise in the mainland, the Hong Kong rag trade vanished.
Equally, the services export boom that replaced it could never have grown to be the mainstay of our economy if the structure of the mainland's economy were conducive to market-based financial industries and its legal system properly adapted to the rule of law. Shanghai would now be No1 again, instead of just the world's biggest wannabe.